Mobile virtual reality (VR) has become a big business in recent years. Many large companies have launched their own mobile VR headsets (sometimes called a VR viewer if it is handheld), such as the Google Daydream headset, Google Cardboard viewer, Samsung Gear VR headset, and so on. Basically, the user's mobile telephone, executing a VR application, is inserted into the headset so that the user is watching the VR application on the screen of their mobile telephone. There may also be a remote control with a touchpad, buttons, etc., in order to allow the user to navigate within the VR application, make selections, change volume, initiate an action, etc. Users thus use these VR headsets together with their mobile telephone to experience the VR application.
While playing the mobile VR application, however, the user can no longer access basic functions of the mobile telephone directly. For example, assume a user is playing a VR game while wearing the headset (and their telephone is mounted in the headset), and then an electronic mail message or SMS text message arrives, the only way to access this message is to take off the VR headset which means that the VR application will be interrupted. And, a user who is watching a VR application using a headset has no way to access basic mobile telephone functions such as sending a text message, taking a photograph, etc. Virtual reality headset vendors and third-party VR application providers both do not offer any solution to solve this problem.
Accordingly, a technique to allow a user access to basic telephone functions from within a VR application is desired.